Rez DC Hack

Hi! first post... anyway, I have been working on hacking Rez for the DC for some time now, I have currently burned revision 7 to a disc and most of it works...except Area2, this hack involves music changes (I have got the beta music for the area select and Area 1) the song now for Area 1 is Rez/Cowgirl and Born Slippy by Underworld, just like in the beta, but there is no music speed problems, the song for Area2 was Fear, but it was faster because of Area2's main flow (Main Flow is the sequence of events that tell the game to change camera angle, spawn an enemy, change the BPM etc) Area3 plays the Lost Area music (the one by Ebz) all other Areas are the same, the text is screwed up, and the HUD textures are too, but that is a small price to pay (for instance the shoot reticule thingy is now the continue texture from the Rez Beta) I put some videos up of it so far~Rez Hack Video 1

Hi! first post... anyway, I have been working on hacking Rez for the DC for some time now, I have currently burned revision 7 to a disc and most of it works...except Area2, this hack involves music changes (I have got the beta music for the area select and Area 1) the song now for Area 1 is Rez/Cowgirl and Born Slippy by Underworld, just like in the beta, but there is no music speed problems, the song for Area2 was Fear, but it was faster because of Area2's main flow (Main Flow is the sequence of events that tell the game to change camera angle, spawn an enemy, change the BPM etc) Area3 plays the Lost Area music (the one by Ebz) all other Areas are the same, the text is screwed up, and the HUD textures are too, but that is a small price to pay (for instance the shoot reticule thingy is now the continue texture from the Rez Beta) I put some videos up of it so far~Rez Hack Video 1

Okay, so usually me or someone else would piss on you for doing simple file swaps, but dammit it's Rez, and you're hacking something other than Sonic, so props to you. Let us know what else you do to the game. It'd be cool if you could create your own scenarios or something.(Also, it'd be cool if you added the beta stuff to the X-Egg. It's simple, and a few of us that care about it would really appreciate it.)Also, your avatar is breaking the tables, so resize it please, before someone deletes it. We do not want your pretty avatar to disappear. =D

Okay, so usually me or someone else would piss on you for doing simple file swaps, but dammit it's Rez, and you're hacking something other than Sonic, so props to you. Let us know what else you do to the game. It'd be cool if you could create your own scenarios or something.

Currently I'm investigating the Main Flow, then the debug menus, what files are required, and any file editing that needs to be done, once that's sorted, I'm going to mess with the Rez Beta, If I can get the files for lost area, trance mission, etc into the game, that would be quite cool, so far, on the Main Flow scene, the Rez Beta allows you to directly edit it from in game, using the DC keyboard, I could spawn the password protector, or in Area5's case, the gate of truth, I spawned 5 at once, glitched the level up, but it was fun, changing camera angles was a bit harder, but worked, so did changing the BPM.

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(Also, it'd be cool if you added the beta stuff to the X-Egg. It's simple, and a few of us that care about it would really appreciate it.)

Anyway, that's pretty cool with the keyboard. Seems it's not just PS2 games which use the keyboard then.

Yes, also, the console menu was quite cool, though, I can't make it load files, when it wants to load a file it goes File Read hex numbers file (example-File Read 81A64F00 M01) so I guess it points to that memory address, and loads that file, and typing help made it give me console commands, I'll post those when I get the chance.

The second debug system, Qindows had a different console menu, with commands like tex [Texture Here] which loads that texture.

Thought I might as well update this, me and a friend have extracted ADX files from the PS2 version of Rez, and are going to edit them, then see about a ADX re-packer that can re-pack ADX files into ADP files, which if you don't know, are basically ADX archives.

The ADX files we got where all area transition sounds, boss transition sounds, and the credits music, it was a nightmare when I had to go through the Trance Mission ADX files.

Thought I might as well update this, me and a friend have extracted ADX files from the PS2 version of Rez, and are going to edit them, then see about a ADX re-packer that can re-pack ADX files into ADP files, which if you don't know, are basically ADX archives.

The ADX files we got where all area transition sounds, boss transition sounds, and the credits music, it was a nightmare when I had to go through the Trance Mission ADX files.

Remember to sample the sounds correctly or the sounds will break and it will sound like screams or high pitch beeps and sounds.

After some exploring through the textures of REZ and the REZ Beta, I found some interesting stuff.

Seems REZ had an area difficulty system at one point, or was going to have one.
The artists bit interests me too.
N-----World was probably Underworld, their music could not be used.
Richard.D.James was also known as Aphex Twin, his music could not be used.
Ken Ishii's song was not implemented yet.
The Chemical Brothers could not be used.
Adam Freeland is not different.

Basically, we found out what type of format the .MPB files are. They are in a form of ADPCM, probably the Yamaha variant-We need to do more research into it though. You can get the .MPB file for Area5, exported as a Wave file from Audacity Here. And then we found out that Rez stores it's models in slightly modified .NJ (Ninja) model files-The .NB format. So using ExMLDNet you can view and export these models. The only hard part is exporting back to the .NJ format. I'll post anything else we find, or if we make any progress hacking these files.

I know it's not the most original thing to do, but I've copied across a post I made about Rez on another forum. This place could do with some more activity.

Rez has a really useful way to sequence it's music. Inside of Rez is a midi based music system. This midi based system uses midi files with 32 channels to create the music for a level. The game loads up the midi file, and then looks for and loads an MPB file and an FPB file. The FPB file tells the game what channels to activate at each layer, while the MPB file actually contains the samples for the song. These samples are then used on the midi file, and then you get the music you hear in-game.

Enemies and other normal level events (Camera angle changes, BPM changes, etc) are handled by a system called 'Mainflow'. There is an editor in the beta for these files. In the beta, if you have created a Mainflow file, and saved it (By default to the VMU), the game will first check for this file, and then fall back to the versions on the disc.

Levels are assembled via another system, this time called a 'Pass'. The beta contains parts of this PassEditor, but I have been unsuccessful in using it. Perhaps it could be invoked with a Katana Unit. Though you can delete every object of a level in the beta. But that can crash the game.

Textures are in the common .PVR format, inside of .PVM archives. These can be edited with the right tools.

There are some interesting things missing on the leaked beta. Such as the STG50 files. You can select from the left click menu stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 20. Loading 50 will crash the game on a 'Can't find STG50.BIN!!' screen. Another missing file is a module file. SNDTEST. I can only assume this was a sound testing module. It will crash the game on a similar screen to STG50's.

There are some videos floating around, we had concepts of the guy being in a big chair with crazy woofer speakers, much more hip hop. Then it went through a very organic phase, undersea microscopic creatures and stuff, which kind of survived the transition into the current form.

I wanted it to be a bit deeper, like 2 or 3 buttons but Mizuguchi-san insisted it stay very minimal so everyone could enjoy it. Thats also why we included the trance mode, where you basically cant die so even people who suck at games can enjoy our game.

'Holy **** thats awesome I forgot all about him!! He was the original bigger enemy from stage 1 that I designed and modeled, the art director towards the end of the game decided he didnt like it and made the new one with the one big fin hanging down. I miss that guy, his tentacles were bright blue and waved all over the place, I was very proud of it. Sad that it didnt make it!'

'wow those are all old prototypes. It took us a while to really nail down the aesthetic and how we were going to approach everything visually. The squares all transformed into different shapes in time with the music, and the other two are prototypes of undersea microscopic life we were almost decided on before we found the tron-like aesthetic we ended up going with.'